Undergraduate Program
Undergraduate Program
Undergraduate Director:Dr. Yana Rodgers
Sr. Department Administrator: Monique Gregory
The Women's & Gender Studies undergraduate program, founded in the early seventies, is one of the oldest in the nation. Currently, the program has over 200 majors and minors and serves over 1900 students annually in a wide array of core and cross-listed courses. The major, approved in 1984, introduces students to significant issues and debates in feminist scholarship, theory, and activism.
“Women’s & Gender Studies seek to enrich traditional disciplinary approaches not simply by including women but by transforming the categories, through which knowledge is produced and disseminated.”
All courses are interdisciplinary and each considers the complex dynamics among race, ethnicity, locality, class, gender, and sexuality. The readings and discussions in each class represent a wide variety of women's perspectives concerning issues such as: the conceptualization of difference, the production and recreation of femininity and masculinity, language and gender, the division of labor, women and poverty, sexual violence, reproductive rights, gay and lesbian theory, gender and popular theory, and contemporary feminist politics. Ultimately, we strive to ground both research and theory in the everyday realities of feminist activism around the globe. Women’s & Gender Studies program faculty, students and staff are active members and leaders of academic and community women’s organizations.
The WGS alumnae pursue their professional career in various fields. One-fifth of our graduates continue their education in graduate programs in different fields (political science, English, law) around the country. Many alumnae also engage in work in the area of health and pharmacy (about one fourth). Others choose law (one-fifth of the alumnae), education (one fourth) media or computer studies. Many WGS graduates continue their activist work in non-governmental organizations that engage with women and work, international politics and women’s leadership.
01:988:318 The Gendered Body (3)
- Instructor: prof joe
- Course Delivery: wwlkjdf
- Current Course Description: this is the current cousre description
Explores the processes by which the body is gendered in different cultures. How is the relationship between physical body, gender, and sexuality forged?
01:988:317 Gender and Consumption (3)
Introduces feminist approaches to consumption through readings that examine the relation of consumption to body, race, nation, and sex work. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 201 or 235 or permission of instructor.
01:988:312 African Feminism (3)
This course is an in-depth examination of diverse critical approaches to the development of feminism in Africa. Students will also build critical understanding of gender dialogues within African societies as experienced in their historical, cultural, social and economic contexts. Through readings, class discussions and written assignments, students will develop critical thinking, analytical, writing and speaking skills. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 235. Credit not given for both this course and 01:016:312.
01:988:311 Gender, Race, and Visual Media (3)
Examines visual culture, especially Hollywood cinema and television, in light of the economic structure of neoliberalism. Race, gender, and sexuality as sites of power; visual texts; connections between culture and politics.
01:988:310 South Asian Feminism (3)
Women's activism in South Asia in autonomous feminist movements, as participants in organized political movements, and in family and community.Credit not given for both this course and 01:925:310.
01:988:308 Women and Society in the Islamic Middle East (3)
History of women and gender relations in the Islamic Middle East: origins of gender inequalities, women's functioning within society, reality versus literary depictions, recent transformations.
01:988:307 Women and the Law (3)
Areas of law that regulate the position of women, including birth control, abortion, marriage, alimony, child support and custody, childcare, education, employment, criminal law (including rape, prostitution, women in prison, and the juvenile justice system), and constitutional rights. Readings in court decisions, statutes, and supplementary materials.
01:988:303 Global Feminisms (3)
Compares the development of feminist writing in several historical periods across different cultures. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 201 or 202 or 235 or by special permission.
01:988:302 Feminist Theory: Contemporary Engagements
Introduction to basic concepts central to contemporary feminist thought; exploration of the critical, productive relationship between feminist and patriarchal theory.
Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 201 or 202 or 235 or by special permission.
01:988:301 Feminist Theory: Historical Perspectives (3)
This course tracks the various developments within the history of feminist theory. It begins with its emergence in and out of liberal, psychoanalytic, and Marxist conceptualizations of the subject. We consider the vexed and paradoxical nature of feminism’s relationship to these theories—they are what originally makes feminist theories thinkable in the West, yet at the same time, are what must be critique, resisted, reimagined, or altogether abandoned, according to many feminist theorists, as they insufficient and limited by their patriarchal, phallocentric, sexist, and often homophobic logics and dispositions. This first half culminates by examining how these critiques, anxieties, and discontents come to (in)form what is termed radical feminism. The second half of the course maps the interventions of a number of other feminist interventions, which critique and build off of these foundational theories, including: ecofeminism, care-focused feminism, black feminism, postcolonial and transnational feminism, queer and trans feminism, and feminist disability studies. Prerequisite: 01:988:101 or 201 or 202 or 235 or by special permission.